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We are sorry

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Re: We are sorry

#191

Post by yeggeyeggeyegge »

csallen wrote: post #189
yeggeyeggeyegge wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>The ability to decide whether or not a course of action is ethical is greatly affected by what your competitors are doing, groupthink, incentives, time pressures, etc. No, its not. You do not kill a person over any of these. You do not kill someones trust in you over any of these. >I cannot be satisfied with the run-of-the-mill, "They did it because they're evil and untrustworthy" response. Then how about that they…

No, its not. You do not kill a person over any of these... they are shitty crappy company who are unconcerned about ethical matters of things You're oversimplifying human behavior. It's not as simple as "bad people do bad things." There are COUNTLESS examples in which large groups of decent people have acted in horrifying, deplorable ways. And our psychologists know enough to reproduce this type of behavior in a lab.…

>You're oversimplifying human behavior

The facts in this case are simple. The judgement is clear. You seem to be justifying their actions. There is no moral justification.

>type of perfectly disastrous environment that could entice even the most noble of people to make bad decisions

see, because of this incident we can now clearly tell which companies are noble and which were pretending to be so. "ducks in a row" is not a moral argument.

>Either you care more about verbally abusing people who behave poorly, or you care more about preventing poor behavior in the future

I am sorry, it is not an either-or, and not the way you put it too. You admonish people for __bad__ behaviour because you care about preventing it in the future.

Re: We are sorry

#193

Post by csallen »

yeggeyeggeyegge wrote: post #191
csallen wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, its not. You do not kill a person over any of these... they are shitty crappy company who are unconcerned about ethical matters of things You're oversimplifying human behavior. It's not as simple as "bad people do bad things." There are COUNTLESS examples in which large groups of decent people have acted in horrifying, deplorable ways. And our psychologists know enough to reproduce this type of behavior in a lab.…

>You're oversimplifying human behavior The facts in this case are simple. The judgement is clear. You seem to be justifying their actions. There is no moral justification. >type of perfectly disastrous environment that could entice even the most noble of people to make bad decisions see, because of this incident we can now clearly tell which companies are noble and which were pretending to be so. "ducks in a row" is…

  You seem to be justifying their actions.
  There is no moral justification.
You can't simply assert that you are right and I am wrong. I gave you clear examples under which normal people can be influenced to do bad things. If you don't think that's possible, then cite errors in the evidence. But if you're going to simply ignore the evidence, I can't take your responses seriously. There's no point in continuing.

  because of this incident we can now clearly
  tell which companies are noble and which were
  pretending to be so.
  ...
  You admonish people for __bad__ behaviour because
  you care about preventing it in the future.
Humanity has been admonishing the immoral behavior companies/politicians/etc for millennia, and yet it still continues to this day. Appealing to morality does not work, has never worked, and never will work. Unless you fix the system, you are accomplishing nothing in the long run. What you're doing is the equivalent of blowing on a pot of boiling water to try and cool it off. Sure, it may get a degree or two colder for a few seconds. But unless you take the pot off the fire, the water will keep boiling.

Re: We are sorry

#194

Post by Tossrock »

Kuiper wrote: post #190
Tossrock wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, as long as we're picking on semantics, that's not what amoral means. Amoral means lacking _regard for_ morality. You use it to describe a person or other entity that is unconcerned with the morality of their actions. Which fits Path pretty well.

Both uses of "amoral" are correct. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amoral "Amorality, the absence of morality; for example, a stone, a chair, or the sky may be considered amoral" , http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/amoral "not involving questions of right or wrong; without moral quality; neither moral nor immoral."

I think Wikipedia is in the wrong here. In fact, if you read the article linked from the disambiguation page, it strongly supports the definition shown in all dictionaries, and makes no mention of rocks or chairs being 'amoral'. Regardless, none of this bears out the idea of 'amoral' meaning morally agnostic, ie actions having no moral component, and your initial semantic nitpick was itself incorrect.

Re: We are sorry

#195

Post by iamleppert »

I don't understand how they could think it's not a terrible thing and feel dirty for doing it just because they can. It's less about making mistakes and more about developer greed. They could have md5'd the email addresses before sending them or used any number of simple to implement techniques that would still have retained the original feature. Stop telling us it was a mistake! This was a premeditated privacy breach, 1st degree. They decided to hedge their bets and profit from their users by blatant disregard for their own users privacy -- the user's why they have a job and VC in the first place. In the end all this is just going to reduce the user experience with unnecessary confirmation dialogs and prompts because a few lousy startups couldn't keep it in their pants. These companies do not deserve forgiveness; they deserve a class action lawsuit.

Re: We are sorry

#197

Post by llch »

batista wrote: post #128
tjoff wrote: post #119

Only problem is: It was not a mistake. They did this only to cover their asses and that has been the only concern they've ever had. That they already tried to push the opt-in was of course only in fear of what just happened. I'm sorry, I'm all for public apologies and I truly believe that it is in times like these companies have a chance to really prove themselves and really make a mishap something positive (and come…

Only problem is: It was not a mistake. They did this only to cover their asses and that has been the only concern they've ever had. Well, you can make a mistake intentionally . As in: "I intentionally opted for course A, and I realize it was a mistake".

I see it as "We made a wrong decision"

Re: We are sorry

#198

Post by sambeau »

mikehotel wrote: post #173
sambeau wrote: post #162

So now they have admitted what they have done, is someone in the UK going to prosecute them, I wonder? It seems they may have broken the data protection act in more than one way. * First, they collected personal data about UK citizens without their permission (as a 3rd party cannot give that permission), * Secondly, personal information was kept for longer than is necessary (it should have been deleted after it was u…

This may be a calculated risk. Hopefully they did more due diligence, but a quick search shows a Dec 2011 case [1] where an estate business was prosecuted for collecting info, but was fined a small amount ( http://www.ico.gov.uk/news/latest_news/2011/estate-agent-pro...

But they are still not complying. They are allowing people to opt-in on behalf of their friends which strictly speaking is against the rules.

Re: We are sorry

#199

Post by yaix »

"""We are deeply sorry if you were uncomfortable with how our application used your phone contacts."""

Or do they mean they are sorry you found out about it?

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